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Date Night In - Carcassonne
If you haven’t figured it out by now, both my husband and I are pretty geeky. We like geeky things, we watch geeky things, there was even this one time we did algebra problems for fun (and I’m no good at math). BUT! Sometimes knowing or reading about geeky things can actually be beneficial to even the coolest of couples. I’m talking about board and card games! Whether it’s Candy Land with the kids or euchre with your great aunt Sally, games have a way of bringing people together, including couples. That’s why today I’m going to review our latest obsession - Carcassonne.
According to Wikipedia, Carcassonne is “a tile-based German-style board game for 2 to 5 players” and won the Game of the Year (Spiel des Jahres) in 2001. Carcassonne is a city in France famed for it’s walls and this game of strategy makes good use of city walls, roads, rivers and cloisters to section off areas. The object of this turn-based game is to use tiles and your game pieces to claim towns and the land around the towns to get points. Be careful, you might think you are the sole farmer on a piece of land, but your opponent might get a tile that ties your land and his land together, essentially canceling out your game piece (called Meeples). Plus you have limited pieces to work with at any given time, so you have to choose carefully! I like to this of the game like a simpler Risk in a way (a game I detest, BTW).
Game play takes about 30-45 minutes on average, so that’s 30-45 minutes more you’re doing something with your spouse rather than staring mindlessly at the tv or worse yet, not even being in the same room! And if your a geek at heart, there are a bunch of expansion packs to make Carcassonne even more challenging! Wanna pick it up for your next date night in? We found the best price at Amazon.
Technorati Tags: board game, date night, carcassonne, meeple
Ooohhh…we love other geek couples. And games. Lots of games. They tend to work well with other couples with kids b/c the kids can all play together while the adults play a game. It’s easy to interrupt to deal with diapers or drinks, and it’s easy to have conversation around a game. Our friend got Bald Man hooked on Settlers of Cattan (which sounds like the game you featured), and they even got me to play it once!